Advertisement

Advertisement

New Scientist Live

. . . . .

By Andreas Frew

IT’S been a big year so far for astronomy and physics, but a rather difficult
one for the people who organise publicity for astronomers and physicists. Last
month, NASA’s well-oiled public relations machine swung into action to unveil
the first-ever image of a planet outside the Solar System (until now, the
presence of such bodies was only inferred from the behaviour of nearby stars).
This was big news, the kind of thing that scientists would normally save for the
annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), scheduled for early
June, or for journal publication.

Was it a desire to claim the thunder for itself that spurred NASA into
publishing by press conference? It might look that way, especially since the
principal investigator was not a NASA employee, and the images were taken by
Johns Hopkins University’s Hubble Space Telescope project. When asked for an
explanation, a NASA official blamed it all on the Net. The principal
investigator did send the paper to the AAS, but somehow it got onto the
Internet. That, said the official, made it public and fair game for NASA to
announce.

JUST two weeks later, the electronic ether got the blame for another
publicity fiasco. Physicists had hard evidence from Japan that neutrinos had
mass. Once again, this was a big deal, with ramifications for the Standard Model
of particle physics, the source of dark matter and ultimately our understanding
of the future of the Universe. Physicists were eager to make a big splash with
it. Publicists prepared news releases at several of the universities involved
and started spreading the word via e-mail that there was big neutrino news on
the way.

But science journalists soon discovered that each of the four universities
had labelled their press releases with different embargo times. So instead of an
orchestrated big bang, the discovery would dribble out at different times. What
followed was a frantic effort by the publicists to agree on a time, then an
electronic chase to track down all the reporters who got the erroneous embargo
times. In the end the embargo held, though the excitement was tarnished somewhat
by the realisation that even physicists have trouble calculating differences in
international time zones.

Advertisement

“GET the government off our backs,” was the rallying cry that swept Ronald
Reagan’s conservatives into office in the early 1980s. Give the marketplace its
head and everything will work out for the best, was the Republican mantra.

Now, with that tax-and-spend liberal Bill Clinton in the White
House—the man Republicans accuse of never having encountered a social
programme he didn’t like—you might think the days of government butting
out of business were long gone. But in the past few months, the Clinton
administration has seemed positively Reaganesque.

Ever since the US Advanced Research Projects Agency set up the world’s first
wide area network, ARPANET, for computer-to-computer communication, the
government has controlled how most Web domain names are distributed. If you
wanted to be an “.org” or “.edu”, you had to get the government’s (or its
agent’s) permission. The Clinton administration is now letting the Internet
community sort out who gets what. The marketplace rules.

The administration is also trying to throw open the way that human organs are
allocated to people needing transplants. The government set up a few rules, but
basically said “you figure it out” to patient interest groups linked to
transplant centres around the country.

In fact, now it’s the Republicans who seem anxious to put up government road
blocks to impede the free flow of commerce. Republican legislators are hammering
away at the Clinton administration for allowing satellite technology to get to
China. At the same time, the business community is applauding Clinton. To
industry, China doesn’t so much represent the last vestiges of the Evil Empire
(a term President Reagan liked to apply to the former USSR), as one gigantic
marketplace. “Curiouser and curiouser!” as Alice cried.